


Suptober Day 26: Walk of Shame

by tiamatv



Series: Promptober 2020 [25]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Established Relationship, M/M, Morning After, Romantic Fluff, Sleepy Cuddles, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27224332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Dean stretches, carefully and happily, and flops carelessly onto his side, ‘cause yeah, good fucking morning, world—And freezes.Oh.Shit, this isn’t his bed.(Another non-sequential chapter for the Neighbors AU.)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Promptober 2020 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954990
Comments: 53
Kudos: 281





	Suptober Day 26: Walk of Shame

**Author's Note:**

> Another day, another work emergency. This was not at ALL the story that I intended to write. In fact, I was planning to go home and go to bed. Then my stubbornness overwhelmed me, because I realized that writing TWO stories after work on a work day just wasn't going to happen.
> 
> I may redo this story, however, at a later date: I don't think Dean's POV quite came out the way I meant it to.

Dean hates alarm clocks.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a thing that lots of people say. They don’t like mornings, it’s just too early to get up. They keep hitting the snooze. They’ve got one that runs away from them so that they have to get out of bed and have to wake themselves up to make it stop. Dean’s heard it all, and he rolls his eyes every time, ‘cause it’s not the same damned thing in his case.

Dean Winchester _likes_ mornings. Yeah, that’s right. He is a fucking _morning person_.

Like, a quiet, sleepy morning, drifting up and out ‘cause there’s nice smooth sunlight coming through the window and it’s just starting to get a little too warm? Nice.

That long stretch in the middle of winter where he can sort of drift forever and it’s still gonna be dark, or he can get up and mix hot chocolate into his coffee ‘cause no-one’ll ever know, and know that there’s still a few hours until he’s got to get to the firehouse? Just fine.

That really, really long, achy stretch, tips to toes, when he knows he’s slept a full eight, and it’s time to get up, make himself a breakfast Sammy’ll go pale to look at, and go hit the world head-on? Goddamned perfect.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP?

Nope. Screw that.

An alarm clock going off is like greeting the morning by being cattle prodded. Dean hates that jarring, wake-the-dead noise of alarm clocks so much that even his _subconscious_ hates them. It’s pretty much a guarantee that if he even sets one of them? He’s going to wake up at _least_ fifteen to twenty minutes before the damned thing goes off.

And that’s exactly why he always sets one.

“Dean,” Sam used to complain, when they were still sharing a bachelor pad and spending about half the days of the week thinking of ways to kill each other (Dean would win: Sam might study law and have a weird thing for serial killers, but Dean reads a lot more murder novels). “You turned my alarm off _again_.”

(Yeah, Dean’s weird thing about alarms extended to Sam’s, too; that fucking noise penetrates through _walls_ , okay?!)

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, bitch,” Dean answered, waving a spatula at him. “Is _that_ how you thank me for making you breakfast, huh? I knew you’d wake up to the smell of cooking, and if you didn’t, I’d’ve woken you up.” He gestured to the full rasher of crispy, soul-sustaining goodness in front of him. “C’mon, have some. It’s that veggie shit you like so much.”

Sam glared at him all the same, but he snapped up one perfectly fried, crispy bit of heaven and stuck it in his mouth.

(Okay, so it wasn’t exactly _veggie_ bacon, but Sam should’ve known better than to believe him about that.)

So when Dean drifts slowly awake, and the morning is still night-heavy and sharp around him, he’s not surprised. The room is only barely warm enough with a blanket pulled all the way up to his shoulders, and the light outside the window is still thin and cool. That’s just the way he rolls—has for years, no matter how much those 24s should have been fucking with his sleep schedule.

Dean stretches, carefully and happily, and flops carelessly onto his side, ‘cause yeah, good fucking morning, world—

And freezes.

Oh.

Shit, this isn’t his bed.

Cas looks so damned young when he’s asleep, the lines smoothed off his forehead, the shadows underneath his eyes less dark and full without the full weight of that Castiel Novak attention behind them. His eyelashes are a brush, long on both the top and the bottom, so they cross at the line of the seam. He sleeps on his stomach, and with his mouth open. His good arm is tossed over his head, opening up the line of his body, and he’s thrown off half the blankets. Dean wants to stick his face into that vulnerable armpit. (That’s weird. Okay, yeah, that’s weird. He shouldn’t do that.)

Holy shit, it wasn’t a _dream_.

Very carefully, Dean takes a loose little flap of skin of his own wrist between the fingernails of his thumb and pointer finger, and pinches.

Nope. Still not a dream.

Cas is still out like a light beside him, even with Dean’s rolling around, and Dean can’t exactly say that the memories come back, because he’s pretty sure they never _left_. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had naughty dreams about the boy-not-quite-next-door—Jesus, the eyeroll he’d get out of Cas if Cas ever heard _that_ bit of brilliance—but maybe he should have known these ones were real.

Dean’s pretty sure most dreams he’s had about Cas are so romantic they make Dean want to roll his eyes at _himself_ and check and see what parts he’s got down below, or they’re pretty fucking raunchy. Dean doesn’t want to be a horndog about it, but them’s the facts: Castiel Novak is a hot ticket, and there’s been more than one night that Dean and his hand have kept company to the thought of Cas riding his cock, or those pink lips parting on a moan as Dean’s lips stretch around his width, or the way Cas’s back might arch so damned beautifully when Dean opens him up with his tongue.

He wasn’t gonna push—never, fucking _never_ ; hell, Dean wasn’t even all that _impatient_ for them to move into that part of it, the physical stuff. They don’t go out much, so Dean doesn’t know how to number their dates, but he can honestly say the numbers don’t matter. Cas kisses shy, he kisses sweet, and his tongue is a goddamned flirt. Dean thinks if all they ever do is cuddle on the sofa, bump shoulder to shoulder, touch feet under the table as they eat something Dean’s made for them both, that’d be a pretty fucking good life.

Dean knows he’s got it bad when he realizes how long it’s been since he got his cock wet, and truth be told, he’s not sure he even cares.

Then Cas asks, very politely, “May I have you naked?” and, well. Dean sort of loses consciousness for a second there.

(Dean doesn’t trip over his socks getting them off, but it’s a near thing. He _does_ trip over his pants when he looks up and realizes that Cas is deliberately peeling off his own clothes too, in the dark that he insisted on. Even with the lights out Dean can feel Cas’s eyes stripping up and down the silhouette of his body, the attention brutally keen.)

Dean knows how much he wants this when they’re just rocking together, completely wrapped up in blankets to their shoulders. They’re naked, and he can _feel_ even if he can’t see, all wrapped up as they are and barely able to move. He doesn’t touch Cas’s bad arm—he knows he doesn’t like that—but he grips his waist, and there’s so little _give_ there that Dean moans into his mouth. Their cocks just only just touching, brushing and sliding past each other in the most tantalizing little slip and slide against each other, poking at groin and the hollow of Dean’s stomach.

It should be really intense, hell, for their first time, and it’s just… it’s not. It’s good, and it’s so _easy,_ it’s like stumbling into Cas’s life and realizing that his favorite author is pretty much nothing like he ever thought, and he’s so much _better_. They both mutter and make jokes against each other’s lips about how absurd it is, two fully grown-ass adult men frotting against each other in a big old blanket burrito, Cas’s laugh soft and hoarse like he’s just starting to scrape the rust off it.

This is something that Dean couldn’t have dreamed of. He didn’t know he’d want this.

There’s nothing perfect about it, nothing urgent. Cas’s chin nearly takes out Dean’s collarbone; his cock gets sloppy-wet, leaving streaks and smears across Dean’s belly, and that’s so fucking hot Dean barely dares touch other than to let himself grip the firm rise of Cas’s hip. Dean shaft, by comparison, feels a little too dry and the scrape of Cas’s short and curlies is just a little uncomfortable when he comes in at the wrong angle.

Dean thinks that maybe he can die happy just from this.

Then Cas’s hand sneaks down between them and holds them together, and he _knows_ he can.

He also knows his heart breaks just a little bit when Cas creeps out of bed behind him maybe a half hour later, after they’ve both cleaned up, curled up. Dean lies very, very still and let his breathing stay slow and warm and easy as he hears the rustle of cloth, a muttered curse. When the bed dips under Cas’s weight again, Dean’s so relieved that he came back he’s not entirely sure what to do about it other than keep playing possum—but he sort of realizes what might have happened when Cas carefully rearranges to curl back in against Dean’s side, his good arm fitting shyly back again over the hollow of Dean’s side and belly.

Watching him now, sleeping, his shoulders moving in small, breathy little bobs, it’s pretty obvious: Cas put his shirt and boxers back on.

Dean reminds himself: gotta tell Cas he’s beautiful. Shit, gotta tell him he’s so _fucking hot_.

Very carefully, he reaches out and runs the tip of a finger down the sharp, gorgeous curve of Cas’s cheekbone. Cas wrinkles his nose up just a little bit like an understudy for I Dream of Jeannie, and Dean pulls his finger away.

He knows he’s gotta go. The angle of the sun isn’t the same from here as his bedroom—his and Cas’s houses don’t face the same way—but he’s pretty sure he’s only just barely going to have enough time to throw together something for breakfast and _maybe_ get into the shower before he’s got to get into Baby and go save some lives, or at least some kittens.

For the first time in his entire damned career, Dean thinks of calling in and pretending he’s sick, and just cuddling back in. Hell, if the guys knew, Dean’s pretty sure at least some of ‘em would even back his play. He wants to think he hasn’t been obvious about what’s been going on with him, but let’s be honest here. Dean is pretty sure about one thing: the only person who _didn’t_ know just how gone Dean is on Cas? Is lying curled on his side next to Dean right this second, breathing sleepy little whiffling breaths that are too soft to call snores.

Sure, Benny would use it as leverage against Dean until the end of time for any future occasion he wants to switch shifts to take Andrea out for something nice… but staring at Cas’s soft-sleeping face? Shit, Dean thinks it would be worth it.

He’s seriously considering this insanity—hell, he’s reaching for his _phone_ —when, _exactly_ on time, his phone alarm goes off.

Dean’s so shocked he almost levitates himself out of his own skin, and he definitely sits straight up, yanking the blankets up in a jerk as they fall from his shoulders. For just a second he can hear his heart jittering in his ears at the suddenness of it.

Hell, it’s been so long since his alarm clock actually _went off_ on him that he honestly forgot what it sounds like.

Dean’s recall was perfectly accurate about one thing, though: it is _really fucking obnoxious_.

He’s finally managed to fumble the demon summoning off when Cas groans like a small, angry dinosaur, and his eyes just barely crack open. Dean’s not sure how, with Cas’s head still on the pillow, he manages to tilt his head at Dean like he’s demanding answers. 

Clearly, that alarm clock doesn’t have the same effect on Cas as on Dean.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Dean says in a whisper, to some slow, sleepy blinking. Cas’s eyes meet his, still barely open in resentful little slits of blue, and Dean’s heart does the foxtrot. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” He darts in, because he can’t help himself, and kisses Cas’s lower lip.

“ _Annoying_ ,” Cas grumbles, snaking out his hand to bat clumsily at Dean’s face, and God, Dean wants this _every day_.

“Me or the alarm?” he teases, plopping a kiss on Cas’s hairline because he can’t help himself—he’s so goddamned _cute_. He smells of sweat and of sleep and of laundry.

Cas’s eyes narrow further until they’re eyelash-lined slits, the barest flash of blue. “Still deciding,” he mutters, and closes his eyes again the rest of the way.

Things that Dean wants to do right now, but he won’t—push Cas onto his back, climb on top of him, and draw that pouty, grumpy lower lip into his mouth. Maybe see if Cas likes being _sucked_ awake; can’t imagine there are many guys who don’t like it, it’s one of Dean’s favorite things.

(Again: morning person. Are they gonna have to negotiate morning sex? Dean’s pretty sure he can make it worth Cas’s while…)

Work. Right. Career. _Right_.

Dean sighs and manages to get himself out of the blanket tangle around his legs, flinching when his feet hit the cold floor. He’s looking for his socks when he hears a deep sigh behind him that sounds like it goes all the way to Jupiter.

When he looks up, Cas has pushed himself to something like a sitting position, lolling against his good arm before he straightens. He has the most epic case of thick, dark sex hair that Dean’s ever seen—fuck, he looks like that and Dean hasn’t even grabbed his _hair_ yet—and he’s licking his own lips. There’s a pillow crease in his cheek. When he yawns and sticks his hand under his own shirt to scratch his belly, Dean’s pretty sure that he’s going to Heaven purely from resisting the temptation that’s blinking blue and sleepy up at him.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, softly, again—oh, there’s his sock. Dean pulls it on and wiggles his toes in their new protection against the floor. “I gotta go, Cas… but next time, I’ll make us breakfast, ‘kay?”

“I would like to say that it’s very ambitious of you to think there’s going to be a next time,” Cas murmurs, and his voice is even deeper in the morning, _probably_ just hoarse with sleep but sounding for all the world like he’s been swallowing Dean down; Dean’s cock twitches with interest before he hastily yanks his sweatpants up his legs. “But there probably will.”

Dean’s heart bobbles, floats. Damned thing’s a balloon, and it doesn’t know where it’s going. It needs to pick a direction and just _stay._ “Aren’t you the sweet-talker,” he teases.

“You’re expecting eloquence before coffee,” Cas answers, dryly. “Not even _you’re_ that cute.”

That gets a laugh out of Dean, and he’s most of the way dressed by the time he realizes that Cas has swung both his legs off the side of the bed. He has his elbow resting on his knee as he rubs one of his eyes, and sighs like being alive is a trial.

“I’ll walk you home,” Cas says, raising his head just _barely_ enough to count as not having it dunked against his chest.

Dean blinks. And points out the window. “Cas, I live two doors down from here.”

“Well, if you lived three doors down I probably wouldn’t be offering.” Cas yawns behind his hand again, and wriggles his shoulders one at a time like he has to wake them up separately.

Dean’s… not sure that Cas is actually kidding. His sense of humor is _weird_.

“I’ve done plenty of walks of shame, Cas, pretty sure I can manage one more on my own,” Dean chuckles—then realizes as Cas’s head falls a little to the side, eyes narrowing in a squint that’s more than just sleepiness, that yeah, that… was a pretty fucking stupid thing to say. On so, so many levels.

Dean doesn’t know if it’s possible to backtrack on what he wants to say so hard that he falls back into the past, but Jesus, he really hopes so. “I mean—” he stammers. “I haven’t done _that_ many, I don’t, it’s not—and not since you, you have to know that—”

“Please don’t hurt yourself,” Cas mutters, and gets out of bed with one rather resentful-looking push of his arm. He pulls on a jacket and sweatpants and wool socks on top of his black boxer-briefs and plain grey t-shirt like they’re going to the city for groceries rather than just wandering across some thirty feet of sidewalk.

Because Dean’s a very mature individual, he sticks his tongue out at Cas.

Cas answers, very seriously, “I am too tired at this moment to cash that check that you are writing, but I will take a rain check.”

“Shit, you are really determined to have the last word, aren’t you?” Dean groans.

Note to self: Cas is _pissy_ in the morning.

(So what would it take to tease him out of that? Imaginings for another time.)

Dean still sighs happily into the cold, crisp air and raises his face to the very beginnings of dawn-tinted sunlight as they step out from Cas’s door. Cas doesn’t say anything, just sort of plods like keeping his head up is about all he’s got the energy for right now. The backs of their hands brush, brush, with every deliberate step. Dean’s not sure whose pinky finger curls around whose, first.

They’re so disgusting. Dean’s all for it.

Their peaceful, tiny little walk is over too soon, but of course it would be.

Cas still looks more like a rumpled little blue jay rather than a world-famous author when he stops in front of Dean’s doorstep—messy-haired, but looking strangely satisfied. Dean carefully fits his key into the lock and jiggles it just right until the catch clicks open.

“Hey…” Dean catches him gently around the waist and draws him back in, pressing a kiss to Cas’s forehead from his position standing on the doorstep. “I had a really good time, Cas,” he says, honestly. “Didn’t want last night to end. Didn’t want _this morning_ to end. But, hey, you really didn’t have to walk me home, you could’ve stayed in bed a little longer…”

It’s probably a weird thing to say to someone Dean hasn’t just been seeing exclusively for a while, but from whom Dean lives _two doors down_.

Cas frowns tiredly at him. “Don’t be silly. Of course I did.”

Dean _could_ argue with him—and on another day, he probably would, because that’d mean he’d get Cas standing here and fussing at him a little bit longer, the apples of his cheeks just barely starting to brighten with the cold, his left sleeve flapping empty because he, uncharacteristic of him, forgot to pin it before they left. The whole deal makes him look even more like someone worth rumpling.

But Dean knows him a little better, now, and Cas very rarely says—or does—things without reasons—especially things that will take him out of his house, much less walking hand and hand across the neighborhood with Dean. It’s not that he doesn’t think people don’t know about them, but there’s a hell of a difference between knowing and _believing_.

“Why do you say that?” Dean asks, carefully.

Cas considers, tapping one toe of the old sneakers he slid on without socks, without undoing the laces, wedging the heel flat underneath his foot. Well, now Dean knows what to get him for Valentine’s: slip-on shoes. Yeah, Dean’s a real fucking romantic.

“I always thought it was very stupid and insulting that the whole process is called a walk of shame,” Cas says, slowly. “Because, most of all, I didn’t want you to be ashamed of something that was so wonderful. Good morning, Dean,” he rumbles, and leans in to give Dean a smooshy, small kiss across the corner of his mouth—if he was aiming for Dean’s lips, he mostly misses, and smears it across Dean’s jawline instead. He doesn’t seem to notice.

Then he plods his not-entirely-steady way back to his house, waving two fingers absently at where Donna is standing on her driveway, in her sheriff uniform, her mouth hanging open.

Dean hastily closes the door before she turns in _his_ direction, thanks.

Years later, whenever someone asks Dean how he knew he was in love with Cas, he always has an answer ready to hand. Okay, it’s a _different_ answer each time, but that doesn’t make any of them less valid. The first time Cas corrects himself on a sports metaphor. When the asshole talks Dean into training for a marathon with him. The look on his face as he mouths every word of the dialogue of Lord of the Rings along with the movie (Dean hasn’t decided if that’s nearly as adorable as it is obnoxious, the jury’s still out).

But this—getting a kiss smooshed across his chin by a sleepy guy who so clearly would rather be anywhere but out of bed, watching through the window as his incredibly shy boyfriend plods his way back towards his house because he didn’t want Dean to have to go home alone—is the very first time Dean realizes, quiet and warm and certain: _Oh hey. I love him_.

Dean wants to say that he’s surprised.

He’s not surprised.

(They never do agree on the alarm clocks, though.)

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Uhmmm yes. I guess there will probably be more from the Neighbors AU in the future, like them actually *getting together* somehow. Since they keep cropping up plotbunnies I didn't even mean to write...


End file.
